"It was not the best of quarters for Linux vendor Novell. When Novell announced its financial results for its first fiscal quarter, which ended Jan. 31, 2006, it reported revenue of $274 million [EUR 227 million], compared to revenue of $290 million [EUR 241 million] for the first fiscal quarter 2005. This was a decline from the previous quarter in which Novell had reported $320 million [EUR 266 million] of revenue."

Many of the enhancements that Novell Linux Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise will introduce in the months to come will have Novell's Linux OS and their great products like iFolder and Mono running on many new computers.

Talking about new enhancements and products that have been around for quite a long time, like Mono and iFolder, isn't going to make the situation any better.

People seem to equate popularity of products, particularly in the open source community, as something that will boost Novell's revenue. It's a bad mistake.